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Re: orion Essenes = 'osey hatorah?





stephen goranson wrote:

>         David Suiter, thanks for your observation.
>         Greg Doudna  wrote "Of course [...] Philo is of no real weight"
> and then asked me "On what basis" do I think that *his* interpretation
> of Philo is wrong. But, if he thinks Philo is of "no real weight,"  why
> even ask?
>         Jack Kilmon, apparently, prefers Aramaic proposals, and has
> often advocated, alternately, one or the  other of the two most popular
> Aramaic ones, Cross' preference or Vermes' preference ("healers").
> First, Hebrew is a more likely source for self-designation of Essenes,
> as the torah is in Hebrew.

Yet if the Semitic word behind "essaioi/esshnoi" was not a
self-designation,but, like "Pharisees" and "Notzrim" were designations used by
the common
folk...whether derisive or not...wasn't that likely to be Aramaic?

Not that I'm an Aramaic chauvinist (g)

> Second, both of these Aramaic proposals can
> be shown to have arisen in the history of scholarship as
> misunderstandings, misunderstandings, e.g., of Maccabees and of De Vita
> Contemplativa.

Explain further for hasen/hasayya please.

> Third,  I do not think 4QAramaic Levi does include this
> Aramaic root. (In the orion archives, this was discussed by Robert
> Kugler, Michael Stone, and others.) Even if one concludes it does
> appear in that little fragment, that is merely once.

But not only once, I assume, for the Hebrew equivalent..butI am away from my
office and references.  May have to
revisit this later tonight.

>         More important, in my opinion, than excluding the sixty or so
> mistaken proposals that I have encountered, is an open-minded look at
> the evidence which indicates Hebrew 'asah: evidence from not only Philo
> and Epiphanius (have you read the latter's description of
> Ossaioi/Ossenoi as a torah observant Jewish heresy? and are you aware
> of the range of sources to which he had access?), but of several other
> texts, citations of which I have typed out on orion before (some of
> them are in Adam/Burchard), more than once, and texts which do indicate
> how the name evolved, why the name was received as it was, and why some
> observers accepted it and some not, and, not least, self-designations
> in several Hebrew Qumran texts widely and correctly regarded, on other
> grounds, as Essene.

I'll hit the texts when I get home and consider this.

Jack


For private reply, e-mail to Jack Kilmon <jkilmon@historian.net>
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